We start our second anniversary of the formal CPO Rising launch with a sincere thank you to our readership. 

While still growing, our readership has helped establish CPO Rising as the place for Chief Procurement Officers and other procurement executives to find articles, research, and news on the topics that matter most to them. Within the US, CPO Rising remains the most visited site focused on procurement/supply management and at any given time over the past twelve months has been the top or within the top 3 ranked sites for global visitors. Interested advertisers should click here for more information.

Thank you also to our sponsors – Hubwoo, BravoSolution, Puridiom, Iasta, BuyerQuest, Nitor Partners, Zycus, & WALLMEDIEN.

On the eve of year three, I feel like we are only scratching the surface of what we can accomplish with this site. We will continue to try to push the envelope with new and creative ways to share our ideas and we appreciate your support. Please spread the word!

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To celebrate our second anniversary, we continue with the CPO Rising Tournament 2012 and 32 lines about 8 CPO match-ups

You may recall that the Road to the CPO’s Final Four began with the top 32 CPO tools, strategies, ideas matched in a tournament to see what, after all, is the most valuable CPO one of the lot. We’ve adopted a different writing style for the tournament and hope it has not been too jarring for the traditionalists. If the tournament is not to your taste, may we suggest reading through these articles on eProcurement and P2P this week.

Region One

(1) eSourcing  vs. (5) Supplier Performance Management       

On the first day of the B2B Internet Boom, the technology gods offered up reverse auctions and it was good. Later enterprises (and technology companies) realized that online supplier negotiations required a broader set of business rules to support more than just single price, all-in bids and eSourcing was born. This fast to deploy, proven savings-driver just needs throughput and adoption to score big. Supplier Performance Management is important, but it is not the game-changer that is eSourcing.

(3) Supplier Collaboration vs. (7) Contract Compliance  

Collaboration as a strategy is huge and will remain huge in throughout decade. Supplier Collaboration is a natural outgrowth of the collaboration trend and will become increasingly important as a way to differentiate products and services. But, most procurement organizations are still focusing on basic blocking and tackling and are not ready to truly engage its supply base. Contract Compliance is a basic blocking and tackling initiative that all procurement departments should attack.

Region Two

(1) Executive Engagement (incl. CPO/CFO partnership) vs. (4) Supplier Networks

For so many years now, procurement’s arrival has been equated with “getting a seat at the executive table.” That continues to be the case. The gain in momentum of Supplier Networks has done nothing to change that. Supplier Networks, like CPO Rising are just scratching the surface. But, a CPO with true Executive Engagement is thing of beauty.

(3) Spend Analysis vs.  (2) Embedding Staff

A technical glitch lost the four original lines about this match. Here are two new lines. To be clear, both are great tools that should be employed by all CPOs. Spend Analysis wins because it’s scalable.

Region 3

(1) Strategic Sourcing vs. (5) ePayables / P2P Linkage

As we noted last time, Strategic Sourcing in 2012 uses technology. If you or your consultant are not using technology (BTW, desktop applications like Word and Excel are not what we’re talking about), you are getting substandard results. ePayables & P2P Linkage is another tool that is gaining in importance for the CPO – streamlining P2P helps them place more focus on the more strategic areas. And that’s just it, Strategic Sourcing is one of those more strategic areas.

(2) Spend Visibility for Sourcing vs. (3) Impl. Savings 

Savings isn’t everything and it’s certainly not the only thing. We try to make that case as often as we can. But, savings is important and we believe that Implemented Savings is the key savings measure to track. You can source without spend visibility, you cannot do it consistently well.

Region 4

(1) Spend Under Management vs. (4) Cloud Technology

The use of Cloud Technology has helped make many of the key supply management technologies more affordable and more accessible. Over the past two years, Cloud has shifted the technology landscape. But, Spend Under Management remains the gold standard metric that helps explain how a procurement organization is doing. And, it remains the best metric to explain the opportunity that sits in front of it in the future.

(3) Supply Risk Management vs. (2) eProcurement

Supply Risk continues to increase, while many Chief Procurement Officers do little. As we continue to regularly see, when a supply incident hits, the results can be devastating. and it is procurement and supply chain’s job to be ready. While many eProcurement systems are in need of a makeover, eProcurement, for many groups, has become the internal face of the procurement organization. While both tools are too big (important) to fail, the daily users win out in this round.

The Elite 8 play on Wednesday!

Tagged in: Chief Procurement Officer, CPO, CPO Bracketology, CPO Shop Talk